General manager Stan Bowman is going to have some very important contract discussions coming up soon.
Connor McDavid, the captain of the Edmonton Oilers and the league’s top player, is eligible to sign an extension in July. The team’s top-scoring defenceman, Evan Bouchard, is also set to become a restricted free agent this summer for the second time in his career, this time with the ability to go to salary arbitration.
During Tuesday’s edition of Daily Faceoff Live, a listener asked Frank Seravalli if the new contract inked by Jakob Chychrun of the Washington Capitals was what we should expect Bouchard to get on his next deal. With 43 points in 65 games and a plus-23 rating in his first season with the Caps, Chychrun agreed to an eight-year, $72 million contract to stay in Washington.
“I think it helps set the baseline, the standard of what [Bouchard’s next contract might it look like,” Seravalli said. “The Oilers need to do whatever they can to keep [Bouchard] under a $10 million AAV. If it’s beyond that, I’m saying: ‘I’m gonna have to look to move you.'”
The Caps acquired Chychrun from the Ottawa Senators in exchange for Nick Jensen and a third-round pick after a rough season that saw him score 41 points in 82 games with a minus-30 rating. The soon-to-be 27-year-old defender has more than bounced back since joining Washington, as his 18 goals and 43 points are both career-highs.
Coming off an 82-point season in 2023-24, it’s safe to assume Evan Bouchard’s agent will point at Chychrun’s contract worth $9 million annually as an example of why Bouchard should making something in the ballpark of $10 million annually. Even amid a somewhat down season with 55 points in 70 games thus far in 2024-25, Bouchard has produced at a much higher rate over his career than Chychrun and will likely argue he should get paid more as a result.
That being said, the situations with Chychrun and Bouchard are quite different.
Chyhrun was selected by the Arizona Coyotes in the first round of the 2016 draft and broke into the NHL the following season. Well before his entry-level deal ended, he signed a six-year contract extension that finished with him becoming an unrestricted free agent after the 2024-25 season. He’s already played on three teams in his career and would have been able to test the open market this summer.
The Oilers selected Bouchard with the tenth overall pick in the 2018 draft and he didn’t break through as a full-time NHLer until 2021-22. He’ll become a restricted free agent in the summer and will have the ability to go to salary arbitration for the first time but the Oilers still have two more seasons of control before Bouchard can become an unrestricted free agent. There’s obviously the threat of an offer-sheet but Bouchard doesn’t have the same agency at this stage as Chychrun.
Bouchard has followed the same contract path as Darnell Nurse to this point in his career. Both players were high draft picks who had the first two seasons of their entry-level deals slide and both players signed two-year bridge contracts following those ELCs.
Nurse signed another two-year contract that walked him right to UFA status and wound up signing an eight-year, $74 million extension the summer before his free agency. The Oilers would certainly like to sign Bouchard long-term this summer but it’s difficult to say how high the team will be willing to go given what they’re going to commit to Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl.